Which laptop is more rounded? [closed]

Question

Hello I am planning to buy a new laptop because my old just died, it's a problem with the motherboard and the hard drive, and it cost me around 300 British Pound (Yes I am based in London)so I decided that I could put that towards a new laptop. I have two options that I like

Option 1: Acer Aspire 3935 Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 (2.0GHz, 1066MHz, 3MB Cache) Widows Vista (R) Home Premium 4GB Memory 250 GB Hard Drive integrated graphic card Mobile Intel MG45

Option 2: HP Pavilion DV2799 Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5Ghz, 6MB Cache) Windows Vista (R) Home Premium 4GB Memory 250 GB Hard Drive dedicated graphic card: GeForce 8400 128 MB

I am quite confuse because I Don't know which laptop is better for my use, I do programing, C, SQL and I do a lot streaming Video what do you think is best? I don't want to pay more If won't be using that extra power

I never had a HP machine I don't know how good they are, my previous one was Acer as well and It last me around 3 years and half Any experience about HP? let me know what you think

thanks Robert - London

Answer 1

Both notebooks will be okay for your usage, with the HP operating significantly faster.

I reside in Asia, and Acer does not have a good reputation here. I recommend strongly that you go for HP if these are the only choices. I had both brands before - HP is much better constructed unless Acer has changed their game.

Usually when buying a notebook, other factors should be equally weighed :

1) Form and factor 2) Battery life 3) Ports availability (# of USB ports, HDMI/VGA out, etc) 4) Screen size and resolution (for coding, get a bigger one for long-term comfort to your eyes).

Answer 2

The HP is a better machine by the numbers. I haven't owned any HP machines, so I can't speak to their reliability. I assume both machines fall within your budget, so if I were you, I'd go with the HP.

Answer 3

At home, I have two Sony Vaio laptops, which are very good multimedia systems, although a bit expensive. I also have an Asus (not Acer) EEE laptop, but just because it's easy to use when I'm away from home, since it's extremely small. I did once buy an Acer netbook for less than EUR 300 but unfortunately I seem to have messed up the SSD disk. Will fix that if I have time, but it didn't make me very happy about the Acer brand. HP took over Compaq, which was a good computer brand in the past. Current systems are a bit of a mixture of HP and Compaq technologies and designs. And both companies have a long history in designing good computer hardware. Acer is also a big company though with a long history. They took over Packard Bell and the technology behind PB. So, looking at the history of both companies, they're just old and very experienced with the technology. My personal experience is that HP, formerly Compaq, creates good hardware, although they tend to make it harder to add additional hardware from other companies, thus forcing you to expand your systems with Compaq-approved components only. But that was 7 years ago. My Acer experience is limited to a Netbook where I reformatted the hard disk to run Windows instead of Linux. It crashed a few months later and I haven't had time to restore it. (Instead, I just bought the EEE, which was almost free combined with a mobile Internet subscription.)

So, two very experienced companies, both with their own reputations. So judging these computers based on just their brand doesn't matter much. They both have had good and bad moments. So just look at the hardware instead.

The Acer you mentioned is slightly slower and uses an Intel graphics card. That card is okay, but the NVidea GeForce is considered (by me) to be superior. Thus, my advise would be the HP Pavillion, unless it's way more expensive than the Acer. But it depends a bit on the additional hardware components of both laptops. And perhaps the warranty and it's conditions. However, you might want to examine a few other brands too.